“Oh…yes!” she responded in embarrassment. “Right!” She was visibly flustered. “So, since we missed Thanksgiving this year, we should host a dinner party. What do you think about that?”
With everything that had happened with my father, we had chosen to forego a Thanksgiving celebration. I was torn at first because it would’ve been the first one for Alika and me, as well as mine and Michaela’s, but it worked out because Janae had made plans for her anyway. But now since the funeral was over, and everyone had already spent time with their families, a gathering might actually be a good thing.
“I think that would be great,” I concurred. “Who’s gonna do the cooking? You or Hazel?”
“Ohhh, noooo! I was gonna cook for Thanksgiving, but I’m thinking something bigger this time. I figure we could hire a caterer. We could do maybe two different cuisines. What do you—”
In mid-sentence our conversation was interrupted by the ringing of the security phone. “Hold that thought, babe,” I stated, walking toward the phone.
“What’s up, Davis?”
“Good evening, Mr. Hunter. I wanted to let you know that there’s a visitor out front.”
This call was rare because usually my visitors were people I already knew and thus they were immediately buzzed through the gates by security.
“Okay…? What’s their name?”
There was a miniature pause from Davis’ end, but then he spoke. “She identified herself as Siobhan Cavanaugh. She says she’s your mother, sir.”
TWENTY-SEVEN
Rush
The air was as thick as it had ever been in any fucking area of my life. I mean, it was thick! Anybody who knew me knew that I was rarely at a loss for words. Well, wait…when I met my daughter I was. That was a time for sure. But I’m never really at a loss for words—to the point of speechless. Usually, I was muted because I was trying my damnedest to avoid conflict, but silence? No. Not from shock. Hell no. Yet, there I sat across from my mother! Siobhan Cavanaugh. I couldn’t stop staring at her. It was as though I was looking directly through her to try going back to childhood and bringing my memories to present. Back to that little kid who came home one day, only to find out that she’d left. That same kid who didn’t sleep for an entire week thinking that it was all a joke, and that I’d awaken one morning to her sitting on the side of my bed.
Gorgeous didn’t begin to describe her. Her hair was dark…really dark and flowing. It cascaded down around her face, her shoulders and down her back in deep waves. From where I sat, she didn’t have a single grey hair unless it was buried beneath a few tresses. Her eyes were piercing and dark, and I didn’t even have to be up close to see that there was a story, an entire novel, behind the small windows. She had a small mole on the left side of her face just to the side of her nose. I was taking all of her in. Trying to capture the picture in case I blinked and it was gone again. I had to. It wasn’t even intentional, more like instinctive. Her cheekbones were high, and though she had only flashed a faint smile upon her arrival, it was easy to tell. She was in full makeup, from her eyes, down to her lips; but something told me that she didn’t need it at all. And she was a stylish woman. She wore a black leather jacket with a black sweater beneath. Dark denim jeans and high-heeled boots that added at least three inches onto what I guesstimated to be about five feet, and seven inches of height.
Alika reentered the room with a box of Kleenex she had gotten from the supply cabinet. “Here you go, Miss Cavanaugh,” she offered, before excusing herself to give us time to talk. She gave me a knowing look before she exited, and I silently wondered when she would say that this life of mine was just too much.
“Please forgive me for staring, Hunter. It’s been so long.”
Yeah, and whose damn fault is that, lady?!
“Thank you for allowing me in,” she said, through periodic sniffles. “I know this is a lot for you to take in right now.”
You damn right it’s a lot for me to take in!
“For reasons I hope you’ll allow me to tell, I wasn’t able to contact you.”
When she saw that I still had a blank stare trained on her, she continued to speak. I had no intentions of coddling her while she struggled to produce words that I didn’t trust to begin with.
“You’ve grown into such a gorgeous man. I mean, I knew you would be, but you are very handsome, son.”
Son? You’ve gotta fucking be kidding me!
“Don’t call me, son,” I requested. “I agreed to speak with you, but don’t come into my life twenty-seven years later like you just left yesterday for a trip to Starbuck’s.”
She bowed her head slightly, her form becoming even more tense than before. But I didn’t care. “I deserve that,” she responded.
“Of course you do,” I added, sarcastically. Then cutting to the chase, I posed, “What’s your reason for being here?”
“I…” she started, and then paused. “I heard about your father.”
“Okay. You heard about my father, and what? You heard about my father, and that brings you to town—if you ever even left. Did you hear about me graduating middle school, or high school? Did you hear about me feeling like the reject spawn with the man you left me with? Did you hear about me getting kicked out of school for beating the shit out of kids as sport when I couldn’t take out my anger on the old man? Let’s hear about all the shit you heard!”
“You’re angry. I get that.”
“I don’t really care whether you get it or not, Siobhan. Not for a single second am I asking for your validation.”
“I know. I didn’t mean to insinuate that you—”
“You show up after all this time calling me, son. Excuse my language…no, fuck that. Don’t excuse my language. That’s some fucking bullshit, lady.” I scooted forward on the sofa, my fury unexpectedly taking over. I placed my elbows across my thighs and clasped my hands together, and bore down on her. “So, what is it that you really want?”
I tried my best to keep my voice down. I wasn’t trying to argue with this woman. A part of me; probably the little boy she’d left behind, wanted to see what the fuck her logical reasoning was. Even though I know that there couldn’t possibly be any! Shit, I had just found out I had a daughter and all I could think of was being the best father I could be to her, and I’m not even the one who birthed her! So, it’s ultimately all about a parent’s love, and it was evident to me that I’d never had the love of either of mine. In fact, the more I thought about it, and the more energy I found myself giving to it, the more I was sure I was ready for her to get the fuck out. I had gotten the opportunity to lay eyes on her after all these years and so I was able to have some form of closure now.
“I wanted to come and see about you, Hunter. I understand you have a beautiful little girl now. You have your lovely girlfriend. It seems that life—”
“My daughter?! How the hell do you know about…never mind. Let’s just do this so we can get it over with, and you can be on your way. When you got here you said that you had reasons. Go ahead and get to that, so we can wrap things up here and so that I can carry on with the rest of my evening.”
“Hunter, you’re angry—”
“Uh-huh, we’ve already established that. And quite frankly, I don’t feel like being angry so like I said—”
“I understand,” she interjected. “I’m not coming to you hoping to be your mother in a day, but I am hoping that after we speak…or rather after you’ve heard me out, that you will at least think about allowing me to be a small part of your life.”
My brows deeply furrowed. “Are you serious?”
“Yes. I’m very serious. If you’ll just hear me out, please.”
I grimaced, as I leaned back into the sofa. “I’m listening…but not for long.”
She inhaled a heap of air and seemed to have difficulty releasing it afterwards, but it came out in a slow drag. The fact that I felt any type of emotion for this person had me boiling on the inside. I didn’t want to feel shit
! Even more than that, I didn’t want…to want to hear what she had to say. At all! But I guess the abandoned kid inside me dominated the moment. I was convinced that it was he who had allowed Siobhan the only free pass she would get.
“I know you can see the difficulty with which I’m approaching things. I do apologize for—”
“Would you like something to drink?” I offered. I surprised even myself with that offering.
“A drink is probably something I should’ve had to loosen up a bit. I hadn’t thought of that,” she responded, with a nervous chuckle. “But no thank you. I’m going to just do this cold turkey sober so I can make sure I’m articulating correctly. This is probably the most important conversation I’ve ever had in all my fifty-three years, and I want to give it my all.”
Damn, I had to admit, she didn’t look any more than maybe forty. If that!
“Okay.”
“Look son…Hunter…I’m sorry,” she said, quickly correcting herself. Her voice cracked. “It was never my choice to leave you, Hunter. It was never my choice to leave. My plan was always to take you with me. I dealt with a lot, Hunter. Your father…”
She abruptly stopped speaking. As unaffected as I was in places, something about her struggle with words softened me, somewhat. Whatever she was trying to get out was probably the story that I saw behind her eyes as I looked into them a short while earlier. I watched her shift nervously in her seat, and then as she removed her leather coat, presumably to get herself to a more comfortable place.
“Your father wasn’t a very nice man, Hunter. He treated me badly. He was a very disrespectful man. I hate speaking ill of a person who’s no longer here to defend himself.”
I found myself assuring her. “It’s okay. It’s your truth to speak.
She nodded at me, and smiled. “Thank you for that.”
“It’s cool.”
“Your father cheated throughout our marriage. He was verbally abusive, and on at least three occasions that I can remember, physically so. It was a lot being married to him. When I had you, I was the happiest I had ever been. I had always wanted a son, and God blessed me with you on the first try. Having you gave my life new meaning, and for a while I was able to separate myself from the things that Lance was doing. I had you to fulfill all areas of my life. You were my one and only, and I was perfectly happy.”
Her voice lowered as she prepared to dive into the rest of her story.
“Then the woman who your father had been having a long-term affair with announced that she was pregnant and that she would be having the child, and a little after a year, your sister, Jamie, was born. I was devastated. I was broken. I was humiliated. I knew that he had women, and I stayed through it. I was always taught that, ‘A man’s gonna do what a man’s gonna do’. So, I let my man do whatever it was that he was going to do no matter how degraded it made me feel. But a crazy part of me never thought that he would bring another child into our union. I was his wife. She was his mistress—one of many, I might add. As much as I didn’t want to, I stayed. I had nowhere else to go. Your father had been my entire life. He was older, wiser, and he took care of me…very well in the beginning. That just didn’t last. When knowledge of your sister hit home, I’d had enough. But what was stopping me was that I didn’t want to leave and have a life of uncertainty with my brand new baby. I wanted the best life for you and I wasn’t sure how well he’d take care of us if I left him.”
The more the woman before me spoke, the more I saw myself in her. She was strong. Even detailing something that seemed to be a very painful point in her life didn’t break her down. She sniffled every now and then, but she had yet to fully break down. It let me know what she was made of. It also showed me that she really wanted to tell me her story—which was in essence, our story.
“So, I stayed. I dealt with it all. Your sister and her mother spent nights there in the house with us. It got to a point where I had my own suite inside Chateau Cambridge…a home I’d helped build! I wanted out so badly. One day I decided that I would try exhausting some of the options that were available to me. Or that I thought were available to me. Feeling hopeful, I made an appointment to seek legal counsel. It all seemed like a good idea until I it was confirmed for me what I already suspected. I had signed a prenuptial agreement, I’d leave him with what I had come in with—nothing. And more than likely, that if that happened, I wouldn’t even be able to take you. They told me that it was highly probable that he would end up with primary custody of you. I was devastated. The last thing I wanted was for you to come of age and see your mother as this stupid woman who would allow herself to be treated in such a way. But I had no choice. I wanted you in my world more than I cared about leaving him. So instead of leaving, I approved the lifestyle and accepted it. But in the process, I needed to tend to me as well. So that resulted in me entertaining a life outside of the house which was something I hadn’t ever thought to do before. Believe it or not, it actually made things a whole lot better. I’d get up in the mornings, and instead of allowing the nanny to take you to school, I’d take you myself and then I’d spend the day to myself outside those walls.”
“Well, on a Friday morning I stopped at the small café near your school, and there I met a man. He was a very handsome man who made me feel beautiful, and wanted, and alive all over again. It was a really healthy friendship in the beginning, but then there came a time when I knew my heart was with him. We would spend these long afternoons together and talk about our future. It was an emotional affair for a couple of years because although your father was doing the things he did, I didn’t have it in me to carry on in the same manner that he was. It just didn’t feel right with my morality. Particularly, since I was the mother of a young boy. But somewhere along the line I fell deeply in love and so did he. Anything between Lance and I became non-existent. He had long ago stopped acknowledging my presence, he had stooped so low as to have his mistress in the house on overnight sleepovers several days out of the week. And that was when my affair turned physical. And that was also when things took a turn against me.”
My interest was piqued the further she got into the story. None of what she was telling me, was anything that I’d known before tonight. “With everything that he had done, or that he was doing, how did it turn against you?” I asked.
“He had me followed. Your father’s money was and still is long, Hunter…very long. And before long he had gotten my lover’s apartment manager to allow cameras to be installed in his home. Lance had a detail on me from the time I left in the morning until I returned in the evening. I always knew how the rich lived, being married to your father, but I had no idea just how much money talked until I was on the other end of humiliation. Without going into too many of the graphic details, I’ll just tell you that your father had footage of Carl and me. That was his name…Carl.”
“Let me take a wild guess and say that he was a black guy, right?”
She looked at me stunned, and her eyes grew in surprise, her heart rising then falling in the process. “Yes,” she responded, with a slight nod to confirm. “Carl was a black man.”
TWENTY-EIGHT
Alika
Tracie had rung my phone early that morning. Under normal circumstances, I wouldn’t have even considered it early, but I’d waited so long for Rush to come to bed that I hadn’t fallen asleep until somewhere near two in the morning. It was now only a few minutes before eight. But taking her call was good because we got a chance to do a little bit of catching up, and I was able to fill her in about the dinner I was planning, which she was onboard with. Rush and I would fly her out for the event. I was excited that she was going to be able to meet the new people in my life.
After hanging up with Tracie, I stayed in place looking around our bedroom, while processing just how far I’d come and how it also wasn’t with its share of drama. I mean, who knew that white people had so much drama in their lives? Surely, not I! I’m living some real life Reality TV stuff, man. I meet my man running
from another man and then end up falling in love and living this large life. Then the man that I love finds out after nine years that he has a child that with a woman whose brother used to be his best friend, but who later tried to destroy his life. Okay, and get this part…the mother of the daughter that he didn’t know he had was paid a huge sum of money to keep the baby a secret and out of his family because, get this…she’s black! Then! Then…somebody finds a way to kill his father, and that’s an ongoing investigation. Then on the heels of that, the mother my man thought might have been dead turns up on his doorstep days after his father’s funeral! Yeah, there wasn’t a man alive who could tell me that I wasn’t living in a lengthy episode of, Love, Lies & Deceit Volume I!
I laughed out loud. It was funny as hell, but it was now a life I’d happily signed on for.
I glanced over at the clock and realized that another half hour had passed by, so I decided to roll out of bed to go in search of Rush. I should’ve seen him by now and as I felt his side of the bed, I wasn’t even sure that he’d come to bed. I was beginning to worry. Maybe I should’ve been more diligent about checking in on him last night as he talked with his mother. He did seem really taken aback by the news that she was at his door, and then even more at the sight of her. And there was definitely anger present when I brought tissue in for her to use for her tears.
Where are you, baby?
I scaled the entire second floor and found that he wasn’t there. I made my way to the top of the banister and looked down into the living room, I didn’t see him. I made my way downstairs and looked at the enclosed lounge area near the pool, and nope. In fact, it was pretty quiet in the house for damn near nine in the morning.
Rapture 2: a BWWM, Alpha Male Romance Page 15